General Articles

How Tiers Work

In battle mode, your opponent is not entirely random. Because there is a large difference from characters like Nappa and Guldo compared to Perfect Cell and Super Saiyan 3 Goku, each character is sorted into a tier, in which you can only fight characters matching your character’s stats.

Tier 1 consists of most base-form Saiyans, the Ginyu Force, the Androids and so on. Tier 2 consists of characters like Freeza, Fat Buu, Second Form Cell, Ginyu in Goku’s Body, Super Saiyan Vegeta and generally the form 2 of most characters. Tier 3 consists of the strongest warriors. These include Majin Vegeta, Evil Buu, Vegetto, Perfect Cell and typically all the final forms of characters.

The Lost Phenomenon
LSW hasn’t exactly had the best translation job in video game history. Trying to censor the game by replacing the word “die” with “lost” has produced some hilarious pieces of dialogue. Even if they had used “lose” instead, which would actually be grammatically correct, it would still have looked bad.

“You’re all going to lost!”
“This planet will LOST!”
“Guess it doesn’t matter, since you’ll lost anyway.”

I’ll let you find the rest on your own as you make your way through the game. Oddly enough, the word “dead” did make the cut, as said by Goku when *SPOILERS!* Freeza kills Krillin.

There are other strange translation errors in the game, such as King Kai’s planet being called Neptune for who knows what reason. We don’t know what the translators were thinking, but their work is now legend. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to make some enemies LOST.

Editor’s Note: This particular problem is only present in the European translation of the game. Not that the US version is without it’s share of translation mishaps too!

Another translation error can be seen in the Buu Saga, when Kid Trunks calls Majin Vegeta “Baba”. He uses this word three times, despite the correct word “Papa/Father” being available. To confuse matters further, the word Baba is used several other times in the game, however it is in reference to Master Roshi’s sister, called Fortuneteller Baba.

3 Stage Atk is one of the most useless cards in the game DBZ LSW.
The main reason being that your character already possesses the ability to use 3 Stage Attacks as their default way of earning cc points. Because it duplicates something that the player has access to for free, it serves as little more than ‘deck filler’ for those who desperately need to fill their decks with cards (such as at the start of story mode).

Interesting fact: By default you can never obtain more than three 3 Stage Atk cards, because enemies in Battle Mode never drop it. The only way of obtaining more is by cheat devices or trading with another player, not that you’d want to!

Battle Mode

In battle mode, you can use any unlocked character to fight against other characters in a 1v1 battle. For every match you win (except the first match sometimes), you get a choice of two cards of which one you can choose to keep. Usually the first card is a card relating to that character (ie. Kamehameha or Spirit Bomb for Goku).

If you’re lucky or skilled enough to win 10 matches in a row, you will start to have three possible cards to choose from for each successive win. This is the ideal situation as you can choose from semi-rare to rare cards more easily.

Definition: 1 bar or One bar

The phrase ‘1 bar’ refers to the fact that the player character only has a single hitpoint of life left. When in this state, players are vulnerable to many moves, including the basic ‘stage attack’ cards which the enemy can use for free. In this situation it is strongly advised to use a healing card in order to stay in the battle.

Arthur: ”A major fact that has been kicking my rear end all over my second run of this game is the AI’s use of random cards now. At first it was really annoying and stopped me from getting characters, but then I realized I can bait them into using moves and just had to learn when they will use certain moves.

For example: I used Goku to unlock Recoome. This time he only uses physical attacks at what seems to be random intervals. When I fought him after losing I realized every time I hit him with a special move after round 3 he came back with a special move of his own, which was either Cont. Kick or R.F.B.. Only near the end of the fight where I was almost dead did he rarely use an Eraser Gun to finish me, regardless of where I was.

Also I noticed the Bosses used moves OPPOSITE of where I was. Meaning if I was in the air Frieza used Elbow Strike, but If I’m on the ground he uses Ki Ball instead.

Also for unlocking characters, unless it’s against Nappa (you can use Evil King to unlock him), all the others require a certain state for your character.

But this theory may not be that correct. Sure, some opponents do follow these strategies, but this vary from the opponent character itself.

Cell for example, when you use any ki or str attack on him, he instantly counters you with a Special Beam cannon or Cell Combo.”

Editor’s Note: When someone is attacked by a special attack and take damage, they can some CC points, this can lead them to counter-attack. The enemy charging up is also a sign that they might use a powerful attack.

There are six card types in DBZ LSW. They are:

Green – Item card (both phases)

Blue – Beam card (attack phase)

Orange – Stage Attack card (attack phase)

Red – Damage card also known as Melee) (attack phase)

Yellow – Dodge card (defense phase)

Yellow/Orange – Special Card (cannot be used)

Stage Attacks are used to gain CC, Beam and Damage attacks deal variable amounts of damage but require a good amount of CC, Item cards generally affect player or enemy stats, or healthbars. Dodge cards allow you to evade moves or interrupt stage attacks.

Special Card

To get the one and only Special Card, you must finish Story Mode once without retrying a battle or accepting defeat.

By accepting defeat, I specifically mean that if you lose a battle and then hit retry or save the game afterwards, it will count against you and Special Card will be unobtainable. To avoid this simply follow this step:

If you lose a battle, do not save and simply reset the game console.

Unfortunately this does mean that Majin Vegeta is unobtainable in the first playthrough, but since you only have one chance at getting Special Card, I urge you to hold off unlocking Majin Vegeta and get Special Card instead.

Note: The Japanese word on the Special Card is “Akira”. The card itself has no use and cannot be used in battle (making it even more useless then the 3 Stage Attack card in terms of battle usefulness).